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Neil McLeod

Cloud Drift

Cloud Drift

oil on canvas
18 x 24cm
£375
Downtime

Downtime

oil on canvas
60 x 50cm
£895
Inuit, In It

Inuit, In It

oil on canvas
50 x 50cm
£795
Listening

Listening

oil on canvas
60 x 50cm
£895
Lost Wax

Lost Wax

oil on canvas
50 x 50cm
£795
Night Garden

Night Garden

oil on canvas
18 x 24cm
£375
Puck

Puck

oil on canvas
50 x 50cm
£795
The Art of Camouflage

The Art of Camouflage

oil on canvas
100 x 80cm
£1400

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My working day begins with a walk. I go early, before breakfast. Sometimes before I’m awake. I follow a circular route around the coastline, mainly through woodland. I can never decide whether to amble, be at one with nature, or speed walk, get in the necessary steps. So I invariably spend the walk trying out different compromises. I once even dedicated my left leg to the amble, the right to the fitness. This made for a particularly small circular journey.

Throughout my walk I try very hard not to think about anything. I have read this is the way to enlightenment. I will mull this over for most of the walk. My deeply thoughtful philosophical inquiry is interrupted by fragments of dreams and memories.

I never dream about  superheroes. I do dream about comics. Similarly I rarely dream about birds, but do so about bird books. My childish heart can still skip a beat seeing a comic cover. My adolescent soul revels in the interplay of images and text, narratives and spaces. The double page diagram on the common or garden, the lesser spotted. The haunts.

I am sometimes joined on my walk by a poet. I try to find the right words to describe to her the early morning winter sun, the fishing boat returning across the still water, the shapes of distant forms, natural and manmade, across the bay. Perhaps I can tease out a simile or metaphor. The poet invariably tells me to be quiet. Often in words unbecoming a poet. I attempt and fail to put into language a memory, neither dramatic nor mundane, but one half felt, a sensation rather than an image. At this the poet’s interest is piqued.

On my coastal walk I pass a small inlet. I have named it Dream Cove. It is a never ending source of inspiration. Anything can happen there in the shape of a poem or short story. In the summer months I will go for a swim in Dream Cove and, every time, wish I’d brought a towel.

I return from my walk, my left side enlightened, my right fit. I have breakfast then head to the studio, put on my jacket. The painting day will be spent trying to remember something.

Neil Mcleod is a painter and writer based in Falmouth, Cornwall. He gained a 1st Class BA (Hons) in Fine Art at The Glasgow School of Art, a Masters in Design at Edinburgh College of Art and a PhD at Glasgow University.

For over 25 years he taught at some of the UK’s leading art schools, including the Glasgow School of Art and Falmouth University. Before entering the visual arts Neil trained and worked as a journalist.

He has exhibited in the UK and overseas, including in Thessaloniki, The Hague and New York. More recently he has exhibited his paintings at Porthmeor Studios in St Ives, the RWA Open and Enys House, Penryn, Cornwall. His paintings are in private collections in USA, Australia and Europe.

Cornwall Contemporary

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